FAMILY AND INDIVIDUAL SUPPORTS - Helpful Links

Berkshire Family And Individual Resources (BFAIR) has been providing Family and Individual Support Services to the residents of Berkshire County for over 15 years. The cornerstone of BFAIR’s Family Support Services is to actively listen to families, help identify services that will be useful and creatively find ways to design and deliver, cost-effective, supports services.  We believe that each family is unique and we offer a flexible array of services that is diverse as the needs of the families we support.  Freedom to chose and participate in the design of services, is considered a critical component of the supports we offer to families.

In order to accomplish this goal we strive to empower families by providing them with the knowledge and support they need to make independent, informed decisions. To do so they must have an understanding of the available options and how their choices are affected by allocated resources. BFAIR places a premium on providing this type of education and training for families. We see this as a way of actualizing our Mission to provide quality services for the families we support.

At BFAIR we view ourselves as partners and strive to create open communication with families. BFAIR supports a Family Advisory Committee which meets monthly and is active in many aspects of services including participation in our staff hiring process. The Family Advisory Committee plays a role in setting the direction of program initiatives, elicits input from other family members and provides critical feedback to Program management. BFAIR’s Family Advisory Committee has assumed a leadership role in advocating with local and State Senators and Representatives and the Committee meets with our Legislators on a regular basis, informing them of the impact of issues that are critical to families.

At BFAIR we believe that families must come first. Through education and support families are empowered to make informed choices and when this occurs, we believe that we have succeeded in actualizing our Mission Statement.

Services offered by BFAIR’s Family Support Program include case management, planned and emergency respite for families, outreach, evening and weekend social clubs, bi-lingual services for Spanish speaking persons, intensive flexible family supports for adolescents, education and self advocacy supports, and family workshops.